In this final section of TheEgoAndHisOwn.com we will relay bibliographic detail and history of the book in its various iterations for the first 100 years in the English language. With the advent of print-on-demand publishing by computer algorithm, there is a proliferation of poor facsimiles, in addition to some poor editions put together by humans. We will give credit to Verso Press, who has recently put out a very nice, retypeset edition that stands out from the rest.

UoE Notes:
The first english language edition of Stirner’s book. Until now, only fragments had been published, translated by a small number of people. The plates from this Tucker edition were used for every known edition until the 1965 Libertarian Book Club edition.

There was a “standard” and a “deluxe” edition of this book. The “deluxe” edition had a green cover and gilt edges. Any copy is rare.

Fifield has published Benjamin Tucker’s “State Socialism and Anarchism”.

This is a UK edition printed using the same plates as the 1907 edition. In the September 1907 edition of Liberty, it was stated:

“While in Europe, I was fortunate in making arrangements with Mr. Arthur C. Fifield, proprietor of the Simple Life Press, 44 Fleet street, London, whereby he becomes sole importer for Great Britain of The Ego and His Own and most of my other publications. English friends who desire to be promptly and readily supplied should apply to Mr. Fifield.”

UoE Notes:This would at first appear to be a reprint of the 1912 edition, as the cover is identical, but the title page lists Fifield and Tucker as co-publishers.

1918

Publisher: Boni & LiverightTranslator: Steven T. ByingtonIntroduction: James L. WalkerTranslator’s Preface: Steven T. ByingtonIndex: NoCity/Country: New YorkSize: 4.25×6.5″ Pages: 387Title: The Ego and His Own
UoE Notes:Part of the “Modern Library” series, the image to the right was found on the internet showing a rare cover. This edition is re-typeset and drops both the introduction by Tucker and the index. The editors have seen three different “states” of this book, and modernlib.com claims it was in print from 1918-1928.

It’s possible that there are up to four printings of this title with four different dust-jackets, though this writer has never seen a dust jacket version for sale. A collector of Modern Library editions is looking for help incollecting information on them here: http://www.modernlib.com/authors/sAuthors/StirnerJackets.html

1921

UoE Notes:Very little is known about this edition. The title page shown to the right was pulled from a sale listing, and it shows that it, at least, was retypeset from the original. One listing referred to “brown cloth covers”.

1963

Publisher Libertarian Book ClubTranslator: Steven T. Byington
Introduction: James J. MartinIndex:X
City/CountrySize: xx Pages: xx
Title The Ego and His Own: The Case of the Individual Against Authority

UoE Notes:
The sub-title came into being on this edition and is credited on the copyright page to Joseph Spivak.
The Libertarian Book Club edition relaunched “Ego” into the popular culture, after a 40 year hiatus of being in-print.

In the spirit of the “Adulterer’s Bible”, this writer has dubbed the LBC edition the “Party First Edition.” On page 155, in the footnotes, it reads:

We see that books that merely produce facsimile copies based on the LBC edition repeat this typo: Dover (1973 and 2005), Rebel Press, Western World Press.

Inside flap copy:This is the first edition of Max Stirner’s universally-known libertarian classic to appear in English in forty-five years, in fact, the first in any language to come forth since the end of the First World War. A world poisoned by decades of totalitarian war has begun to review the origins of the anthill society which has turned out to be the real logical consequence of the herd-forces launched by the French Revolution, with its nationalism, majority-group tyranny and conscription, and of Marxian and other coercive collectivisms, including the 20th century state capitalist forms. Part of that reappraisal has resulted in the rediscovery of Marx’s formidable contemporary opponent Stirner, and the complacent feeling of Marxians that the former had disposed of Stirner for all time has been badly shaken.

As Herbert Read observed in an essay commemorating the centennial of Stirner’s The Ego and His Own (the German original, Der Einzige and sein Eigentum, bore the publication date 1845, though it really was in circulation in the last months of the year previous), “the giants whom Marx thought he had slain show signs of coming to life again,” and Stirner is one of them. The fact that Stirner was the real antithesis of Marx (and, incidentally, of Hegel) has long been ignored, blurred, or suppressed, though Sidney Hook, in his durable From Hegel to Marx, emphasized that in their controversy, Marx and Stirner were discussing “the fundamental problems of any possible system of ethics or public morality.” How a number of lesser figures have been posed as Marx’s prime antagonists over the years is a tribute to the determination to escape the far more uncomfortable and demanding Stirnerite alternative.

James L. Walker, in his introduction to the original English language edition in 1907, declared that “In Stirner we have the philosophical foundation for political liberty.” This is amply borne out by Stirner’s point-blank repudiation of all isms and dogmas, his tireless restatement of the necessity for self-liberation, for refusal to become mobilized and immolated by the juggernaut of Church, or State, or the “Society” of the secular mythmakers. “Stirner shows that men can make their own tyrants as they make their own gods,” Walker observes, “and his purpose is to unmake tyrants.”

The famed author and critic James Gibbons Huneker (1860-1921) in his essay on Stirner published in 1909 stated without reservation that The Ego and His Own was “The most revolutionary book ever written.” Certainly nothing has appeared in print subsequently to replace it in this category. The present edition is still the admirable translation from the German by Steven T. Byington, edited by James J. Martin (author of Men Against the State (L.B.C., 1957) and editor of Paul Eltzbacher, Anarchism (L.B.C., 1960)), for the purpose of eliminating minor stylistic awkwardness, without changing an iota of Stirner’s thought or intent. Furthermore, this edition is the only one ever published in which Stirner’s numerous literary and historical references and allusions are fully annotated, an assistance to contemporary readers of no little importance or service.

A careful and sober reading of The Ego and His Own may reveal to the perspicacious the corroboration of Stirner to be found in some modern psychologists, such as Trigant Burrow, Carl Jung, Otto Rank and particularly Erich Fromm, especially in view of Stirner’s stress on what has become known in our time as “the integration of personality.” The debt of modern “philosophers of self’ such as Martin Buber and some existentialists is even more obvious.

1963

Publisher Libertarian Book ClubTranslator: Steven T. Byington
Introduction: James J. MartinIndex:X
City/CountrySize: xx Pages: xx
Title The Ego and His Own: The Case of the Individual Against Authority

UoE Notes:
The paperback edition of the LBC book is identical in content, but the cover is merely a duplication of the title page instead of using the illustration produced for the cover of the hardback by Harry Rifkin.

1971

UoE Notes:Part of the “Roots of the Right” series. This is an abridged/altered edition of Der Einzige, and includes sections from Stirner’s other writings.

Inside Flap Copy:The life of the nineteenth-century anarchist philosopher Max Stirner was notable for one outstanding event: the writing of The Ego and His Own. This classic text, almost unavailable in English today, anticipated and influenced many prominent, psychological, philosophical and political theories of the last hundred years.
A long and vigorous monologue exploring the foundations of the ego, the book was regarded by Marx—who wrote a fourhundred-page reply to Stirner—as the most dangerous of polemics against socialism. The intensity and persistence of Stirner’s revaluation of life led to psychological insights, making him an important precursor of Nietzsche and Freud. Stirner’s egoist philosophy, contra every type of moral and social order, disinherits him from any political tradition. But his savagely penetrating critiques of liberalism and socialism generate ideas which were readily incorporated into fascist ideology. Mussolini, for one, claimed to have been greatly indebted to him. Moreover, there is contemporary relevance in a new look at this strangely neglected thinker : he presents the most fully-developed case against all supra-individual authority. Already in Stirner can be found the rhetoric of ‘doing your own thing’ and of ‘repressive tolerance’.
John Carroll’s selection from this extraordinary book, presenting in an easily assimilable form the essence of Stirner’s ideas, is an invaluable work for all students of politics and philosophy.

UoE Notes:
The copyright page notes that this edition is “an unabridged and corrected republication of the English translation published by the Libertarian Book Club in 1963.”

Back cover copy:
“Nothing is more to me than myself!” rings Max Stirner’s declaration at the beginning of this libertarian classic that set about to level one of the first and most serious arguments against government. religion, morality, or any force that tends to threaten human liberty.
Stirner begins with an examination of “ego” in a single man, then traces the subjugation of ego from ancient times to the nineteenth century. Nothing escapes his indictment: the ancient philosophers, Christianity, monarchism, the bourgeois state; all have only fettered Man with laws, morality and obligations. A revolution does away with one evil only to replace it with another, and Stirner predicted (years before Marx’s Manifesto was even published) that socialism would create one of the most oppressive totalitarian states ever.
For the political scientist and philosopher The Ego and His Own is essential reading. For those concerned about the encroachment of authority upon individual liberty, Stirner delineates a philosophy of self against authority that, whether agreed with or not, is unsurpassed in its scope. This volume in the Dover series on the history of social protest has been called by James Huneker, “The most revolutionary book ever written.”
Unabridged, corrected reprinting of the 1963 English edition. Annotations and an introduction by James J. Martin. Translated from the 1845 German edition by Steven T. Byington. xviii + 366pp. 51/2 x 81/2. 22897-5 Paperbound

UoE Notes:The audiobook has the introduction attributed to “James S. Maston,” though it is the same James J. Martin introduction first published in 1963. It appears Mr. Riggenbach/Laissez Faire used the 1982 Western World Press edition as a source, as the material read at the beginning of the tape is truncated the same way.

Originally published as ten 90 minute audio cassettes in a plastic clamshell case.

1995

Publisher: CambridgeTranslator: Steven T. ByingtonEditor: David LeopoldIntroduction: David LeopoldIndex: Both “Subject” and “Name” index.City/Country: Cambridge, UK/New York, USASize: 5.375×8.375 Pages:386Title: The Ego and Its Own

UoE Notes:Part of the “Cambridge Tests in the History of Political Thought” series.

Back cover copy:

Max Stirner’s The Ego and Its Own has been called ‘the most revolutionary [book] ever written’. First published in 1844, Stirner’s distinctive and powerful polemic sounded the death knell of left Hegelianism, with its attack on Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, Moses Hess, and others. It contains an enduring and strikingly written critique of both liberalism and socialism from the perspective of an extreme and eccentric individualism. Karl Marx was only one of many contemporaries provoked into a lengthy rebuttal of Stirner’s argument. More recently, Stirner has been variously portrayed as a nihilistic anarchist, a precursor of Nietzsche, and a forerunner of existentialism.
This edition of Stirner’s work comprises a revised version of Steven Byington’s much-praised translation, together with an introduction and notes on the historical background to Stirner’s text.

2005

Publisher: DoverTranslator: Steven T. ByingtonIntroduction: James J. MartinIndex: NoCity/Country: Mineola, New York/USASize: 5.5×8.5″ Pages: 366Cover design: John M. AlvesTitle: The Ego and His Own: The Case of the Individual Against Authority

UoE Notes:Dover redesigned the cover of their edition and did the absolute least amount of work when they re-released “Ego” in 2005.

Back cover states:

“Dover (2005) unabridged republication of the 1963 English edition. Annotations and an introduction by James J. Martin. Translated from the 1845 German edition by Steven T. Byington.”